< Apart From Love: Chapter 27 >

A Price Would Be Paid

And on the other hand, something must be done to take care of me, because my stomach is growling. This morning there is no breakfast waiting there, on the kitchen table—not even a morsel of food. Instead, tucked in a wrinkle of the white tablecloth are a few peculiar specks. 

Wiping the sleep from my eyes I get closer, and discover a pair of pearl earrings and a matching pearl necklace, with a silver fishhook clasp. There are also a few bunches of hundred dollar bills, which must have poured out of that large manila envelope. They are tied with rubber bands, and scattered in plain view.

I lament my misfortune, realizing I should have risen from bed much earlier, because there she is, already counting some of them, holding them close to her chest, as if trying to rearrange a deck of cards without being too obvious about her game plan.

At my age, having to ask my father for pocket money is an embarrassment. As for Anita, I suppose it is no fun for her, either. At stake here is independence, at least for a time, for one of us. Oh, sweet freedom! I figure it is not only on my mind, but on hers too, so naturally, it is the one thing neither one of us is quick to mention.

I stare at Anita. She stares at me. I have no idea how much cash we are not talking about—except to know it is a whole lot. It could pay the rent for a whole year, maybe.

Somehow this big heap of money—the likes of which I have never seen in my life—changes things between us. At this moment I am watching her with the eye of a rival, realizing that I must stop wasting time blowing hot and cold. This is war! I must fight, must make a move—if only I knew what it could be—or else, she will soon plunder what I believe to be rightfully mine. And yet, I find myself wavering.

I wonder how it came about that she got her hands on those pieces of jewelry, which in a flash, look terribly familiar. One thing seems clear: I have been looking for mom’s pearl earrings in all the wrong places during the last few days.

Maybe Anita can see all that—the doubts, the suspicions—in my face. Her cheeks turn, all of a sudden, as red as apples. I should have ducked, because out of the blue, here comes a rubber band, vibrating, singing in the air, missing me by a breath.

She tightens the oversized cotton shirt, which belongs to my father, around her waist, trying to tidy it up by smoothing the crinkles. And something wild seems to flicker in her eye when she looks up at me, while plucking at another rubber band.

“As usual,” she says, “you’re acting like a child.”

And I say, “What did I do?”

And she says, “You want others to make decisions for you.”

And I say, “Why, what did I say?”

And quite sharply, she counters, “Exactly.”

And I say, “Exactly what?”

And she says, “You didn’t say nothing exactly—so you think I don’t get it?”

For lack of an answer, I shrug.

Anita fixes me with a bright gaze. This time it is all but sultry, which immediately makes her seem so effortlessly irresistible. “I bet I can tell what you’re thinking, like, right now,” she says.

And then, in a tone that mimics mine, she acts me out, as if she could tell, somehow, every thought that has crossed my mind just now, as if it were etched on my forehead.

“The jewelry,” she says in that lowered tone, a tone that is just like mine, “it belongs to my mom; the money—to my father. So I guess, if I wait long enough, I should get it. I mean: All of it!”

I shrug again, so on she goes, mocking me uninterrupted, speaking from deep down in her throat, as if in my voice.

“Yes, it is entirely mine, well, almost—even though I am not at all greedy, no, not at all! So like, despite not having a penny to my name, I am in no hurry to grab it already. And anyway, what is it doing here, just like that, out in the open, instead of in a safe or something? That woman, she should keep her hands off it, because really, it don’t belong to her, and never will! It belongs to my family! And she, she comes from outside. She should not even come close enough to breathe on it—much less, touch it! Her being married to my father? That’s nothing, really. Nothing more than a sad mistake!”

I make up my mind not to show her how embarrassed she has made me feel, and when that fails me, there is always Plan B: I avert my eyes, lowering them till they fall right there, on the manila envelope—only to discover her name writ large on it, in his handwriting.

“It is just that I wonder, I mean, about my father,” I mutter. “What on earth made him give you all this? Not that you don’t deserve it—but why now?”

“You mean, he must have gone nuts,” she says. “I swear, he’s out of his mind, that’s for sure.”

“I mean, something must have happened to him, all of a sudden.”

“Something did happen,” says Anita, “but I ain’t exactly sure what to make of it. Lenny cried in his sleep last night.”

“Really? My father? I cannot believe it. Are you sure? Maybe he just snored, or sighed, or whistled from his nose?”

In place of an answer, she goes on to say, “Then, way before dawn, he got up, and trust me: He looked plenty strange. Frantic! Searched every drawer in his desk. Said he’s gonna be late coming home tonight, and I said, What, again? And like, what’s your excuse this time? And he said not to worry, because like, he needs to look at some docs and some papers and stuff with his lawyer.”

“Mr. Bliss?”

“You know him?”

“Yes,” I say. “When I was away in Europe, my father wrote to me once or twice about consulting him. You see, Mr. Bliss always pops up at times of misery.” 

“Misery? Like what?” asks Anita.

“Ten years ago,” I say, “He put together the divorce papers for my parents.”

She says nothing, but at the mere mention of the word divorce, her skin turns papery white. She seems to be weighing some odds in her mind, as if to compare her version of the past against mine—or else, to project it onto the present.

According to my recollection, Mr. Bliss provided legal advice one more time, five years later, after the divorce had already taken place. He helped my father transfer some assets into his name, assets which up to then, had belonged to mom.

My parents had been leading separate lives at that point, so to me, this whole transfer business seemed more than a bit odd: It seemed utterly confusing, to the point that I did not know if to laugh or cry—but now, with the secrecy about mom’s condition lifted, at long last, I think I have gained some clarity, with which I can try to reconstruct the timeline of events.

So this, I guess, is what must have happened: About five years ago, mom was diagnosed with a form of Alzheimer’s. By transferring her assets dad wanted, perhaps, to shield her estate from the costs, the treatment costs which she was likely to face, as her disease would go on, making its progress.

I try to think of a short version of what happened, which I can tell Anita.

I say, “My father wrote a letter to me, in which his tone was unusually gloomy. I could see that he was pondering the mistakes he had made in his life—”

“Me being one of them, I bet.”

“It was, I think, the first time he wrote to me about having a sense of his own mortality.”

“Like, what does that mean?”

“He lost his appetite, which used to be immense, and began saying vague things, thing such as, Life hangs by a hair, which made my own hair stand on edge with worry. I imagined him doing something rash, something unusually reckless, such as putting a blade to his throat. And a fear fell on me from my own thoughts.”

Anita looks puzzled.

“I don’t recall him saying nothing like that,” she insists. “I must have gone back to my mama, just then.”

“At the same time,” I tell her, “my father mentioned that he had gotten some assets, which had not been in his name before, so now he was trying to figure out what to do with them, in case, God forbid... If, you know... I mean, should he die. So his longtime lawyer, Mr. Bliss, put together a will for him.”

“Have you seen it?”

I pace around the kitchen, feeling uneasy. “No,” I say, noting an unsteady tone in my voice, and hating it. “I have never even asked my father about the details, never wanted to be bothered with some convoluted legal clauses, because, I mean, being an only child, I trusted him to be fair, to take care of me.”

“I wish I had a pa like yours,” says Anita. “Someone who’s gonna care for you, like, always.”

Which brings me to a halt. I recall, all of a sudden, how I found myself wondering about him. I remember thinking that he had not only been disloyal to mom, but was perhaps unfair as well. He told me he would be managing her assets for her, but that hardly explained why they were transferred in his name.

It might have been just a coincidence, I told myself—but once the deed was done, the tone in his letters changed back to normal, by which I mean, annoying. Lots of useless fatherly advice. I guess that meant that he went back to normal, and so, thankfully, did his appetite.

In his letters from then on, there was rarely a mention of mom—except to suggest, in a vague way, that she was away, perhaps on some tour, giving piano performances here and there, in distant places around the world. Only now do I recognize that what I was given was a sketch of reality, which was as faint as it was misleading. And yet, being away, I rarely asked any questions of my dad, because I wanted to trust him. I was so desperate for this sketch to be true.

Meanwhile, Anita breaking my silence. Holding her breath, she traces that wrinkle across the white tablecloth, till her finger is only a touch away from the two pearl earrings. I can see their twin glint mirrored there, in her eye, the luster floating over the green shadow, which seems so intense at this moment, now that she is tempted. Her tongue passes, with great thirst, slowly over her red lips.

By the end of that lick, she seems to come to a conclusion. She says, first to herself, “Lenny has something up his sleeve, but it isn’t divorce papers. Things are not that bad, I don’t think. I bet it’s a new will, then.”

And to me she says, “Yes, it must be that. And you’re wrong about one thing: Your father has two sons to consider, because like, you’re not an only child no more.”

And with that, Anita pushes away from the table, and takes a step back to the kitchen window, and stands there in profile, bathed in sunlight, as if to give me a chance to take her in, to discover the change taking place in her. At first I cannot see it, I wouldn’t, because look, her arms and legs are just as scrawny as ever—but then she starts turning away, and the light is so dazzling as to play tricks on me.

It is erasing and redrawing the creases of his shirt around her curves, which suggests to me, at that second, crumpled tissue paper encasing a pear.

I watch the earring dangling there, from her fingers, as she flicks a wisp of her auburn hair, and brings the thing to her earlobe. A matching earring is dangling opposite her, glistening out of the pane of glass.

“Anyhow,” says Anita. “This morning Lenny got out of bed with a pretty foul mood, telling me not to wait up for him. And me, I tried to make light of how things have turned up between us, so I didn’t tell him nothing about how he’d cried last night, because anyway, he won’t believe me. And instead I kissed him, leaving him no choice but to kiss me right back, which in spite of himself, he did.”

“And I shouldn’t even tell you, and even if I did, I shouldn’t, really, blush over it like this—but what started with a tiny tickle, and an innocent little smooch on the lips ended up, to my surprise, with a big flair—like old times, almost! So I made the mistake of not paying close attention to nothing he said after that, because like, I didn’t want to trouble myself with no more questions—till I got up from bed, and came here to find this envelope, see here? With them bundles of cash, inside.”

I cannot help asking, “What is that for?”

“Whatever it is, I don’t deserve this.”

“Well, he thinks you do.”

“No, you don’t understand,” she says, shaking her head. “I ain’t the other woman no more. A wife, that’s what I’ve become, and not just because of a wedding, or a mistake in the way things came about—but because, you see, here I am. Ten years! I deserve better than an afterthought, I mean, better than someone swaggering out of the bedroom and like, making a big display of throwing his cash at me after having sex—no matter the damn amount! I bet it’s small change for him, anyhow.”

Then Anita rises up from the table. Her motion is abrupt, as if she has come, in a blink, to a point of decision. “Here,” she says, pushing the entire heap across the table, to the very edge. “Want it?”

I hesitate, “If he did leave it for you, then...”

Anita cuts in, “You can have it, Ben. All of it.”

I step back from her. “No,” I say. “I cannot take it from you.”

Which brings a smile to her lips, which is playful and at the same time, full of spite. Impatient, she lays her hand on one of the bundles, and snaps lightly at its rubber band. “I don’t want none of this money, Ben, you can take it or else, return it to him, or whatever. Don’t make me decide things for you. I ain’t your mama.”

And in a snap, she tosses the bundle up in the air with all her might. The thing rises up, bending and flipping in the glow of morning light, till I make up my mind to reach up and catch it.

At which time, with a pop, dozens of bills separate out of the pack, as if a bird has just shot through the place, shaking out her tail feathers. There is a big, vigorous flurry of green. Hundred dollar bills go flying, drifting to and fro in the crisp, golden air as if to tease me, falling out of my grasp in a grand swirl all over the floor.

“Money don’t come cheap,” says Anita. “There’s something I want in return.”

And before I can ask, What is it, she takes my hand in hers and places it right there, on the coarse fabric of that shirt, on her belly. Instantly I feel warm, not just on the palm of my hand, but all over, inside.

“All I want is a fair deal,” she says. “And it’s not even for me that I’m asking this. It’s for my baby. You can’t judge me for that—so just, don’t. Now I ain’t stupid, Ben. I know Lenny has big expenses, like, taking care of your mom living there, at that Sunrise home, and all. Anyhow, he’s gonna do right by you, all right. Just remind him he has two sons, will you?”

Is that all she wants, I ask myself, and as if to confirm, she nods at me, saying, “He should do right by both of them. Just promise me that, Ben. To you he’ll listen.”

Then, without even waiting for an answer Anita stuffs the bundles back into the envelope. With a swift motion—as if she denies herself the space of even a single second to think, to regret her decision—she drops in the pair of earrings, and the pearl necklace as well.

“Wait! Why don’t you keep that, at least?” I ask her.

“I wish I could,” she says. “Just a few years ago I would be dying, just dying for the chance to touch, let alone wear something so expensive, so stylish. I swear, I would have killed for that chance! For a girl like me, it’s awful tempting. But I can’t do it now. Believe me, Ben: I’ve tried. When I bring that earring near me it’s like, I feel Natasha rushing in, like she’s coming to breathe something right here, right in my ear. And her whisper—oh God!—it’s so freaking faint that I can’t even tell no more what it is that she wants from me.”

“You are so superstitious, it is cute,” I say. “I suppose you never dare play her piano.”

In place of an answer, Anita slips back to the window, and fumbles in the breast pocket of the shirt, and digs out a red lipstick. On her back I can, for an instant, spot a light impression of the clasp of her bra. I can tell—by reading the motion of fabric around her shoulder blade—that she is applying a fresh rim around her lips.

Perhaps to her, she does not look like herself today, because there she is, leaning into the glass, twirling a red wisp of hair around her finger, as if to make sure it is really her.

The glass gives a glimpse of what lies beyond, a gray street view, over which flows a faint line, the line of his stiff collar, peeling away from what looks to be her neck. From this angle I think I can spot also the hollow, the reflected hollow between her beasts, and a vague impression of something plump and fruity. Perhaps a mouth.

So I say, “I suppose you never dare look in her mirror, either.”

And she turns over her shoulder and gives me a look, as if to say, No! It ain’t true, and I so hate you for guessing that! Like, I don’t need none of your stupid comments—so don’t you start, now!

Which of course, I ignore.

“The way I see it,” I go on to tell her, “you must choose, and soon. Either you get rid of everything here, I mean, empty this place, and make it truly yours—or else, for your own good, move out of here and go, make your home someplace else.”

“I’ve thought about that,” she has to admit.

A moment later she says, “Yes, you’re so right! I’m gonna totally empty this place!” And her mind leaps ahead of mine, because now Anita comes up with, “Of all them old pieces of furniture, the first thing to go is this: the white piano.”

The piano? It is so dear to me, and carries so many memories of mom, her piano lessons and her rehearsals and concerts, that at once I change my position, and say, “What? Why? And how, how dare you? I mean, how can you even think of getting rid of that?”

She lays her arms around my neck, as if to calm me down, and she says to me, in a softer voice this time, “The piano, it don’t belong here, and it don’t really belong to me—or even to you. It belongs to your mama, right? So let’s do the right thing, and bring it to her.”

I hesitate to ask, “What, to Sunrise?”

And she smiles, “Yes, Ben, to sunrise!”

And then, then her arms find a way to wrap around my shoulders, and in turn—before I realize what it is I am doing—my hand slips around her waist, first over that shirt, then under it, so now my fingers are in the small of her back, clasping her tightly against me. I can feel every curve, every dimple on her, which makes my body come towards hers and cling, much too stiffly, to her.

I feel the flow, the blood swelling wildly in my veins, and my flesh melting here, under her touch, and at the same time hardening there,  under the crotch of my jeans, making me rise, rise from a newly formed core down there, in a truly immense way.

Her face is close, so close that the freckles on her nose turn suddenly into a milky blur, below which I can sense a smell, the strawberry smell of the lipstick on her mouth. And yet, in spite of nearly bursting out of my skin with this enormous erection, I make no advance, for fear she may guess that I do not know what I am doing. She may bid me withdraw, or laugh at me, or even reject me outright.

I try to control myself, making absolutely no move—except for one thing, which is stronger than me: trembling. Oh, and another thing: sweating. I suppose I should remove my palms from her breast, because by now they are so wet, wet to the point of being sticky.

But before I can bring myself to do that, Anita takes pity on me, for which I shall forever be grateful. She brings me in, and rubs her cheek against mine, so now her hair flames all around me. I fall to my knees before her, pressing my head below the mound of her belly, nosing around, down the slope to the red fuzz right there, in between her legs. Which makes her hips roll this way and that around me, and her knees part slightly as she comes down, and she holds me, with great softness, and kisses my hair, my eyes. And her lips—

I should not tell you anything about her lips, how sweet and moist they are. I should not tell you anything, period. Not sure right now if that is what I have just done. If so, I should edit it out. Erase it.

Wait; let me just do that.

Rewind. Record.

And Anita smiles, “Yes, Ben, to sunrise!”

After which she bustles about, and with a new burst of energy she runs to the living room and wraps the piano in a few layers of blankets, which she ties around the legs, so its surface would not be scuffed or gouged. She calls some piano moving experts, and negotiates a price, and tells them to be extra careful and strap the thing securely to a dolly, or else.

She orchestrates the arrival time with the administration at Sunrise home. She calls each one of my three aunts, just to give them a chance to give their blessings for the move, or not.

Finally, Anita calls my father once, twice, three times in his office, and cannot leave a message, because the answering machine must be full. So she dials Mr. Bliss’s number, which she has managed, somehow, to find in a notebook in some drawer, and talks with his secretary, who seems quite surprised to be asked about Lenny.

By now everyone is on board regarding the piano—everyone, that is, except my father, who for the moment, cannot be reached anywhere.

Meanwhile I get a large frying pan, and turn the heat up, and start pouring batter till it hisses in there. I do it because I must. I must get myself busy, to delay thinking about what has happened here between us, to avoid realizing that a price would be paid for it. Sooner or later he would know what we have done, as he always does.

No doubt I would be punished, and so would she.

I manage to burn the batter into pancakes, lifting one after another with a spatula into an attempted flip in the air. It turns out that despite years of trial and error, and above all, of unreasonable hope, still, to this day I am just as I used to be: an incredibly lousy cook.

By the time I am done, the scene is a mess. It brings to mind a charred battlefield. Some of the batter has ended up drizzling on the cooktop, and spattering onto the floor, mostly on my left foot, and on a limp rubber band, and a previously crisp one-hundred dollar bill, both of which are lying down there, in the dust. But I do not mind—and neither does Anita.

She plops down in the corner, and seems tired now, which I can tell, because she is even shivering a bit. I heap the pancakes onto a paper plate, and splash a chipped coffee mug with orange juice, and tear open a bag of salted peanuts which I got yesterday out of some vending machine, all of which I set in front of her—right there on the table—as if they were a truce offering.

I do it because on one hand, something must be done to take care of Anita.

Rewind. Play.

And on the other hand something must be done to take care of me, because my stomach is growling.